


Starbucks For Three Months

by BananaWombat



Series: Starbucks For Three Months [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bucky briefly thinks Steve is a construction worker, Bucky keeps calling Steve GWKGI (Guy Who Keeps Getting Injured), Bucky kind of wants to kill her a little bit, Christine the receptionist, Getting Together, Hospitals, M/M, Nurse Bucky, Post-Serum Steve Rogers, Steve's super serum keeps healing him really quickly and Bucky is a little confused by it, The Avengers Are Good Bros, Winter Soldier-Looking Bucky Barnes, and the Avengers are still the Avengers, at least they try to be, but Bucky was born in 1983, this is gonna be teeth-rotting be warned, well Steve is still Captain America
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-18
Updated: 2015-07-18
Packaged: 2018-04-10 00:07:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4369607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BananaWombat/pseuds/BananaWombat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A big blonde buff dude keeps appearing in the ER on Bucky's shift.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Starbucks For Three Months

"He's back."

"Again?"

Christine nodded, popping her gum. "Again."

Bucky sighed, pushing his coffee cup away and standing up. "You have a room prepared?"

"Yeup." 

It was the same guy. Again. For the fourth time. In  _two weeks._ Bucky wasn't exactly sure how it was possible to sustain so many injuries in such a short space of time. But it happened, and this guy was proof.

He pushed the exam room door open, snapping on gloves. "Alright. What is it this time?"

"Um," said the guy, "I think I broke one of my shoulder bones."

He was already sitting on the edge of the exam table, peeled down to a white vest and those weird clunky blue pants and boots. 

"Where's the pain?" 

"Arm, kind of?"

Bucky nodded, taking hold of the guy's (unfairly massive) bicep. Guy Who Keeps Getting Injured And Has Massive Biceps - or GWKGIAHMB, or just GWKGI - breathed in a little sharply at the coldness of the gloves. Bucky muttered a half-hearted apology and peered at the damage. "Huh. Doesn't look too bad. Fractured humerus, I think, but - "

"But?"

"It looks kind of like it's already healing." He let go of the Unfairly Massive Bicep and squinted at GWKGI. "When did you say you got this?"

"I didn't. But today."

Bucky hummed. "Well. From the looks of it you could just do with a sling or something." He turned to prepare one.

"What did you say your name was?"

"Sorry?"

"Your name." Bucky can sense GWKGI fidgeting without even looking at him. "I know you're Barnes, because - "

" - of my nametag. Right." Bucky coughed. "Uh. James."

"James."

"But everyone calls me Bucky."

"Can I - ?"

"Yes, yes you can."

"Thank you." Bucky turned back around, and GWKGI was smiling. It made his whole face light up and Bucky felt temporarily blinded by the combination of smile, face, blond hair, white shirt, and massive biceps. "Bucky."

Bucky fixed him up with a sling, trying not to let his fingers linger too long on GWKGI's skin, and it was only when GWKGI was gone and the door was swinging that he thought to say, "and what's _your_ name?"

* * *

Bucky searches patient records in vain, and even asks around a couple of the other the nurses to see if anyone caught the guy's name, but it all proves futile. GWKGI seems to simply be GWKGI, and Bucky will have to wait until he reappears to ask.

He doesn't have to wait long.

"Your boy's back in ER," Christine says, snapping her gum. Watermelon flavor. Yesterday it was strawberry.

"Not my boy," Bucky corrects automatically, then jerks. "Wait, that guy?"

"That guy," Christine confirms. 

"Room?"

"Obviously."

GWKGI is once again ready and waiting on the table, this time with his leg propped up beside him.

"Ankle?"

"Ankle," GWKGI nods.

Bucky pokes and prods, murmuring to himself, the furrow between his brow deepening with every passing second. "When did you get this?"

"Today."

"Are you sure?"

GWKGI gives him a look. It's probably meant to be exasperated, but there's an undertone of nervousness. "I'm pretty sure I'd remember breaking my ankle, Bucky."

Bucky starts at the use of his name. "It looks like it has a week or two's healing already."

"Maybe my body is just fast?"

Bucky quirks an eyebrow. GWKGI blushes. "Not like - "

"Not like that, I get it, unintentional innuendo," Bucky says, grinning. "Can't resist a joke, sorry. Anyway - simple cast should suffice."

GWKGI is looking at him through his eyelashes throughout the rest of their conversation, and Bucky feels like a very fat cat is sitting on his chest and making it just a little harder to breathe, and its only when GWKGI is gone again that Bucky remembers.

"Fuck."

No name.

* * *

GWKGI appears again two days later, and again three days after that. The flirting - at least, Bucky's fairly sure it's flirting - continues. And still, he always, always forgets to ask for a name.

They get to know each other, despite the fact that he still doesn't have a name to put to a face. He learns that GWKGI likes Beyonce and banana bread, and that his mother was Irish and he was born and raised in Brooklyn, just like Bucky was.

GWKGI learns more about Bucky, too. Bucky lets slip little things, like how he has his sister's handmade paper fortune-tellers under his bed because she went through a phase and didn't stop making them for weeks, and how he really hates Nora down in the radiology department, and how shitty the cafeteria coffee is.

GWKGI brings him a Starbucks next time he comes in with a fractured wrist. Bucky briefly tells him off - "you waited in a fucking Starbucks line when you had a broken bone?!" - before grabbing the coffee and inhaling it. 

"That - is - good - _shit_."

GWKGI flashes his blinding smiles and keeps bringing in coffees. 

Bucky never does get around to asking him just how he keeps sustaining these injuries, but assumes he probably works in construction. And is really, really clumsy.

* * *

Bucky discovers that GWKGI does not, in fact, work in construction.

It's gotten to a point where Christine refers to their regular meetings as dates, and if Bucky wasn't lying to himself, he would have agreed. GWKGI brings him coffee. They chat about nothing in particular. They flirt over blood and occasionally bone. GWKGI keeps turning up on his shift.

One time, after three months of their injury-fixing/dates, Bucky calls in sick and stays at home all day watching Real Housewives and sniffling miserably into a dwindling supply of tissues. When it blows over, the moment he gets back to work Christine is pouncing on him. "Your guy turned up."

"He did?" 

"Told him you weren't here. He asked about you." Christine looks almost excited. "Looked _reeeeaaaaaal_ disappointed when I said you were off sick. I'm pretty sure he would've asked for your address so he could've brought you soup and cuddles if it wouldn't have looked weird."

GWKGI doesn't come in for the next week, and Bucky absolutely does not admit that he keeps an eye on the door for him. Especially not when Christine is watching him like a smug hawk.

Eventually, GWKGI does come back.

He limps in through the double doors, eyes scanning the front desk, and the moment he spots Bucky, his whole face lights up. Bucky suppresses a cringe. Christine is going to have a field day.

"Bucky!" GWKGI says happily, as if his leg is not at a strange angle and bleeding all over the carpet. "You're back!"

"Yeah," Bucky says, and hurries over to hook a shoulder under GWKGI's armpit. "So are you, pal. And in your usual great shape."

GWKGI chuckles. Bucky silently asks the heavens why an insanely good-looking man who is possibly a construction worker with a death wish seems to have taken a shine to him.

 _Not complaining_ , he adds.

He gets GWKGI cleaned up, they flirt some more, and GWKGI seems genuinely happy and relieved that Bucky is okay after his twenty-four-hour cold spell. Bucky finds himself a little touched at the idea of GWKGI worrying over him.

About half an hour after GWKGI has left the building and Christine has finally stopped shooting him looks, a group of very odd, familiar, slightly intimidating people march in through the front doors.

Christine's eyes look like they're going to pop out of their sockets.  _The Avengers_ are the shapes her mouth silently forms.

And they are. Bucky almost doesn't believe it.

"Why does Cap keep coming to a civilian hospital?" the sandy-haired guy on the right - Hawkeye, Bucky's brain vaguely supplies - says, eyeing the surroundings. His gaze catches on the indiscernible smudges on the wall. Could be a grimy child, could be a nasty body liquid. Bucky doesn't know and it looks like Hawkeye doesn't either.

"And why this one?" Iron Man - Tony Stark - adds, a little snootily for Bucky's liking. He strides up to the front desk, which Bucky is currently sitting behind (and Christine is not, still standing over at the coffee machine, which she must be kicking herself for).

"Hi, we're here for the patient records of a one Steve Rogers?" Falcon says. He looks more polite than the others, and Bucky immediately likes him.

"Uh," Bucky says intelligently. "I don't think - "

"Come on, Steve Rogers," Tony Stark breaks in. "Captain America. You know him. Whole country knows him. Tall, blond, really good shoulders."

Fuck.

Fuck.

Shitfuckdamn.

Bucky doesn't say any of that out loud, but instead coughs. "We don't have him listed under Steve Rogers."

Tony Stark's brows wrinkle. "Why the hell not?"

"Anonymity, probably," Black Widow says. "You've seen him, though, right?"

That's one way of putting it.

"Do you remember the times he came in? Which rooms? Those records?"

"Yeah, just - give me a second, I'll get 'em together for you."

Black Widow nods in thanks, and the Avengers move slightly away, talking among themselves. 

Bucky feels like his heart is beating in his throat. He's been treating Captain America for three and a bit months. He's been flirting with Captain America for three and a bit months. He's gotten closer than strictly professionally necessary to Captain America's junk a couple of times.

Captain America has been buying him Starbucks.

For three months.

Christine's jaw is still unhinged.

Bucky finally scrambles the records together and hands them to Falcon. The Avengers don't take long deliberating over them - having two superspies on your side must make spotting patterns a piece of cake - and give them back without much ceremony.

"James B Barnes," he thinks he hears Hawkeye muse as they leave. 

Bucky feels kind of like he's going to be sick.

* * *

If Christine repeats "you're dating Captain America" one more time, Bucky is going to punch her in the throat.

He hasn't seen the Avengers or GWKGI - Captain America, Steve Rogers - for a week now, and he's getting nervous. Is he going to be threatened? Are they plotting his murder? Are they going to tie him up and interrogate him?

None of those options sound very appealing. 

Turns out, they're actually going to abduct him. 

Bucky finds this out at 3:02 pm on Thursday, when Black Widow and Iron Man stride through the doors during a quiet hour.

"James Barnes," Tony Stark announces to the mostly-empty waiting room. "Anyone know where I can find a nurse called James Barnes?"

Nobody says anything.

"Come on, people, can't be that hard," Tony Stark says, and raises his voice like it will help. "James Barnes, anyone?"

Christine points at Bucky.

Fucking Christine.

"Records guy," Tony Stark muses. "Huh. Didn't know Cap went for the bad boy type."

Bucky sputters. His arm isn't  _that_ obvious, and - and the hair isn't scary, as far as he knows - and the pink scrubs certainly aren't intimidating - 

Tony Stark does not hear this silent reproach, and instead slides two hundred dollar bills across the counter to Christine. "Mr Barnes will be taking the rest of the afternoon off. If anyone asks, he called in sick. 'Kay?"

Christine nods, entranced, and makes a grab for the money.

Tony Stark beckons Bucky with one imperious hand. "Come along, we have places to be."

* * *

Bucky immediately regrets ever doing anything Tony Stark says when he steps outside the hospital.

Two metal arms grab him around the middle, and he doesn't even have time to shriek when he's suddenly a hundred and fifty feet up in the air.

"Don't look down!" War Machine orders.

Bucky does. Bucky screams. Bucky faints.

"So he only  _looks_ like a bad boy," he hears Tony Stark saying when he eventually comes to. He can't have been out more than thirty seconds, maybe a minute, because they're descending towards what looks like a helicopter pad on top of formerly Stark - now Avengers - Tower. He can see Iron Man suited up out of the corner of his eye, Black Widow dangling (looking unfairly relaxed) in his metal grip.

They touch down to the helicopter pad, and Black Widow steps gracefully from Iron Man's embrace.

Bucky does not. The instant War Machine releases him, he wobbles, takes a shaky step forward, and falls onto both knees, retching. 

"Definitely not a bad boy."

Bucky, on the spur of the moment, flips him off. Iron Man releases a surprised laugh, the sound becoming less metallic as his suit unlocks and he becomes Tony Stark again. War Machine beside him turns back into Colonel James Rhodes. 

"So you found - ? Oh. It was records guy? Didn't see that one coming."

There are now two pairs of black combat boots in his field of vision. The voice is Hawkeye's.

"Steve likes him?" Falcon says, sounding disbelieving. Bucky mentally second-guesses his first impression of the man.

"Friends!" says a new voice. It sounds British. Must be that Norse alien - Thor. "I have brought the Captain. Steven, may we present your lover to you - "

"Lover?" Bucky chokes out.

"Bucky?" says Steve's voice uncertainly. There are the sounds of hurrying feet, and Steve is suddenly down on his knees beside Bucky, hand on his back, looking concerned. "Are you alright?"

"Fucking - hate - flying."

Steve pats him consolingly, then turns and gives the iciest glare Bucky has ever seen on anyone, let alone Captain America, to Tony Stark. "What the hell did you do?"

Bucky can practically feel the way the billionaire must have his hands raised in surrender right now. "Hey, look, if you're going to be dating someone for realsies, we thought maybe it would be good to introduce 'em to the family, y'know?" There's a pout to his voice when he says, "unless you're, like, _ashamed_ of us. Which is really kind of rude, Rogers."

"Wouldn't blame him," Bucky mutters darkly, and Tony Stark makes an indignant noise.

"Bucky?" Steve says again, and he sounds so genuinely worried that it makes Bucky's heart hurt. 

Bucky waves him off. "'M fine. Fine. Just - hah. I think I might be sick. Fuck."

"Not on the top of my Tower, please," Tony Stark says, and James Rhodes smacks him. 

"No. It's gone. 'M fine." Bucky sits slowly back on his haunches, pressing his eyes closed, lips tight. Steve is silent, and when Bucky eventually opens his eyes, he's very pale.

"I - "

"Yeah. You're Captain America. Didn't tell me. Kinda got that," Bucky says, unable to keep a hint of bitterness out of his voice, and Steve's face crumples, hand stilling where it had still been rubbing on Bucky's back. Bucky sighs. "Ah, fuck. You've been buying me coffee for three months. Why."

"Because - "

"Because he was crushing harder than a schoolgirl, obviously," Black Widow says, examining her nails. Steve gives her a pained look, turning bright pink.

"Wait, you bought him coffee?" Hawkeye pipes up.

"Starbucks," Bucky says.

Falcon whistles. "He really likes you, then. He's always going on about how expensive that stuff is."

Hawkeye is grinning. "You bought him coffee. That's so cliche, man." He looks like he would punch Steve amicably on the shoulder, except he probably doesn't want to have his head bashed in by either a supersoldier fist or indestructible shield right now.

"Are you - " Steve says, swallowing visibly, "are you - mad?"

"Mad?" Bucky considers. "Not really."

A smile begins.

"Well," Bucky amends, "kind of. Little bit."

The smile drops.

"But, you know - I'm not so bothered by the fact that you're Captain America, and more that I'd have liked to have known your name was Steve. So I wouldn't have had to call you GWKGI all these months."

"G - W - K - G - I?" Steve repeats, frowning.

"Guy Who Keeps Getting Injured," Bucky explains.

"And going to a civilian hospital instead of one of our extremely well-equipped medical wards," Tony Stark says loftily, "simply because he went there on a whim one time after punching up some aliens and decided one of the nurses was cute."

"I think it's adorable," Falcon puts in helpfully.

"Do you intend to wed this fine healer of mankind, Steven?" Thor asks jovially.

"Uh," Bucky says, "weddings. That's a bit - not out of the question, but - I have only just got his name, so - "

"'Not out of the question'?" Steve repeats.

Bucky wants to murder Christine right now. She isn't even here, but if she was, she'd be dead meat. "Let's stick with maybe a movie date for now, and - dinner, maybe, I know a good place down in Little Italy - "

Steve has a smile so wide it's like his face is a beacon.

Bucky decides to maybe give Christine the benefit of the doubt.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
